X.org server 1.8.0 released => no more HAL needed (hopefully)
 

I noticed that here.

Good news (for me, at least): "The X.Org Server 1.8 release offers udev support to replace HAL on Linux..."

Can we hope to see it make its way on Slackware-14 ?

I tried to compile it on -current but it complain about dri being too old for now :(

Anyway for the adventurous among us, the source tarball is here

Have fun

Reply
 

Thanks for the information Didier!

As ive said before, xorg isnt the only piece of software relying on HAL. Theres also KDE and XFCE.
As long as Slackware stays with KDE 4.3.5 (regarding polkit and the lack of a shadow backend for it), it will also need HAL.
Obviously XFCE has to get a new release as well.

I understand your standpoint but selfishly, i.e. as a Fluxbox user, at least and at last I won't have to re compile xorg-server --without-config-hal anymore ;)

You can also re-compile it with a patch to support udev hotplugging instead of hal hotplugging. In that way, you don't need xorg.conf, and you don't need hal, either. You just need a newer udev.

Generally speaking I avoid patching source tarballs and would be afraid to upgrade a major package like udev. Also, I'm used to edit xorg.conf anyway (BTW, xorg.conf is still usable with X.org server 1.8.0).

Thanks for the heads-up though, it could be useful to somebody more adventurous than me.

It still uses Hal, but gives priority to udev.

http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online...to-replace-HAL

This is nice news to me.

I too try to not patch the original source for things where possible, so this xorg looks attractive. I'm with you Didier in that I don't use KDE or XFCE any longer -- but I wonder if/what anything else might be that *requires * HAL to be around on Slackware? I don't auto-mount anything (except fstab partitions during boot). Might have to look into this some more.

Who knows, maybe this Xorg will get into Slack 14 or so!

As for upgrading udev (RE post #6): udev has always been a fast moving target, at least it was when I paid attention, from Slack 11 up until 13.0. I haven't paid as close attention to it the last number of months.
I have successfully upgraded it many times (prior to Slack 13.0) but you must be observant about this because at several points in its lifetime, udev behavior had changed rather drastically from one version to the next, particularly (what I noticed was) syntax in the rules changed, requiring fixing up of any custom udev rules one had made. Besides this, upgrading udev has for the most part not given me much grief.

Anyhow, thanks for posting this.

Sasha

Looks like there headed in that direction
http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/